Wednesday, September 03, 2008

At work the other day, a man came through my line with a paper bag from the bakery. These bags are usually used for doughnuts, so I asked him, "How many doughnuts do you have?"

He replied, "They aren't doughnuts."

Sometimes people put rolls or buns from the bakery in these bags instead, so I inquired what was in the bag.

"They're long johns."

Usually when immense stupidity happens upon me while I'm at work, I do my best to ignore it. My face goes slack, my eyes glaze over, and I feel a little bit of my soul sucked out of me and vanish into the ether. For some reason, though, this time I decided to try to educate this poor, misinformed man. "Long johns are a kind of doughnut," I explained.

"No," he replied, "long johns are long." Then, in case I didn't understand the point he was attempting to make, he added "Long johns."

I thought a second, collected his change from the till, and returned, "The thing that makes them all doughnuts is the dough." I handed him his receipt, "Doughnuts."

He didn't say anything in reply, but, then, he didn't have to. After all, he was free roam the earth, probably gainfully employed and with a happy family waiting for him at home, horribly misinformed about doughnuts and uneducated in the basics of rhetoric, while I was stuck working for the minimum wage allowed by law at a place not-ironically named for a wiggling piglet.

ouch. a doughnut is a doughnut, regardless of shape. a fried pastry. give me a physical description of this guy so that i can imagine him guzzling said warm lemonade and then crying briefly about that promotion to manager of Pizza Hut he's still dreaming about.

You are right Zach...specifically put, a Long John is a type of donut.

Which takes me to the story of Lauren when she worked at the deli at the Chillicothe Walmart. The customer had asked Lauren what the difference was between regular roast beef and Angus roast beef was. Lauren accurately and quite literally told the customer that Angus is a breed of cattle and that regular roast beef comes from any type of cattle. Afterward, her supervisor pulled and caustically informed her that her answer to the customer was incorrect...Angus was special type of meat.